Dal, the Draik Mutation
by Minno150
Summary: High on Terror Mountain a laboratory is creating new pets from the DNA of other pets. Here, they have created their first living specimen, Dal, the cross between a zafara and a draik. Dal learns about the world around him and the purpose of his creation.
1. Awakening

Note: All characters mentioned are my own creations. None of them actually exist on the Neopets site. If you go to neopets and are a roleplayer you might see the characters in this story on the RP boards. My username is minno150 (it's a tad bit over-used) so drop by and say hello. Or look for me on the boards. I usually start the Neopet roleplays rather than joining them so it shouldn't be hard. Aside from that, catch me at any literate Medieval Fantasy. I do some Modern Fantasy too.

On with the story...

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Either the authoress has bribed you to come here, you're here by mistake, or you don't know what you're getting into. Either way, you're here.

This is my story.

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" It's waking up."

" Oh finally."

" I was afraid we were going to lose this one."

I listened to the voices around me, somehow making sense of them. Slowly my eyes were opening and I could see more of the room. It was made up of mostly tables, counters, cabinets, shelves, and other, stranger devices. The floor was tiled and the walls were white. Everything was kept in order in this room. I was off to a side of the room, the back, in a cylinder tank. The fluid in my containment was being drained now and one of the voice making creatures stepped forward. The top was removed from the tank and I was lifted out.

My pink-purple eyes blinked a little at the light and I stared up into the face of the man now holding me. He had on thick gloves, incase I bit him I guess, and a long white jacket with black pants. His shoes were black as well and... shiny. My ears twitched a little and the man set me down on a table. It was a metal table and horribly cold, but I just sat there, looking around me with curiousity.

"The first one that made it," One of the men in the room muttered under their breath and took out a clipboard. He jotted something down on the paper clipped to it, "now for the tests."

Tests? Why didn't I like that word?

They poked and prodded me with several objects. Somehow, whatever I was doing in reaction was exactly what they wanted as they would mutter 'Perfect' or 'Excellent' and write something down on their clipboards. And then I was taken outside.

It was freezing and the ground was covered in some deep white stuff. I didn't like it at all. The moment they set me down I shook the stuff from my paws. There were several large objects out here and the area was penned in. Another 'incase' safety measure. They didn't want me leaving.

One of the men stepped forward and gave me a command. He wanted me to climb through one of the large objects, a large tube thing that was about eight feet in length. I could do that.

So I walked over to it and hesitantly climbed in. Within seconds I was out on the otherside. They really liked that.

And then I was given another command. One of the big things was a ramp. It was smaller than the other stuff in the pen but it was still fairly larger than myself. I was to jump off this onto a tall platform over fifteen feet away. So I did. I ran up the ramp and kicked off with my backlegs. They were powerful legs, whatever I was it was strong. That jump sent me into the air and soon I was on the platform.

I was given some other commands and then I was taken back inside. I was glad to be out of the snow. I wasn't glad when they stuffed me into a metal cage.

The men wrote down a few more things and turned off the lights. They were gone and I was alone.

I stared around me, taking in every detail of the room. It was as I had described earlier, very organized. There were some charts and posters on the walls. One of them caught my eye. It read 'Neopets' along the top and I looked at it curiously. It had pictures of creatures and names beneath them. I looked down at myself and proceeded to figure out just what I was. I had a yellow front and white fur. My paws had three fingers and my hindlegs were strong and three-toed. My arms were somewhat thin, especially in comparison with my legs. I had a long tail with a spaded tip. After much turning and looking I discovered that I had yellow spikes on my back. Though I couldn't match myself color-wise, I found that my basic shape was that of a zafara. Next to that chart was another chart with different colors on it. So that was it, pets came in different colors. I was a white zafara.

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Months passed and the men came and went. I was put through 'tests' and 'training' each day. They fed me this weird food. I can't say it tasted very good but I didn't know anything else. After awhile they stopped testing and training me and would just set me out in the pen for a new thing called 'exercise'. I took this time to look around and explore. There wasn't much to explore in the pen but outside of it was much more. I sat on a wooden platform in the pen and looked around at it all. There was a ton of snow still, for that's what the white stuff had been. According to the men, we lived in a place called Terror Mountain, where it snowed all year round. Outside of the pen were tall brown things with green needle things hanging off them. Some had snow piled on top of them. I was told these were called trees. And there were large greyish things too. They also had snow on them and looked almost like the metal I was used to. But they looked more... solid. And they weren't as shiny. You couldn't see yourself in them. They were called rocks.

After that there wasn't much of anything. Just the building behind me that was called 'the lab' or 'the laboratory'. I sighed and laid down on the platform. Surely the entire world wasn't this dull.

Snow started to fall from the sky just then. Now I knew where it all came from.

Something went over the pen and landed in a nearby tree. I jumped to my feet and stared at it, my ears perked.

It was fairly small and had wide, flat arms and an even flatter tail. Its mouth was pointed, hard, and sorta looked solid like the rock, but lighter like the metal. Its fur was attached to small needle things in a neat line on both sides. It was covered in these needles.

It looked to me and tilted its head to the side. And then it spoke.

"What on earth are you?"

It spoke! It spoke like one of the men creatures. Could I do that?

"Well?" It pressed, giving me a weird look.

I opened my mouth and tried to form a word. I got a squeak on my first try. This couldn't be too hard.

"I-I...I'm..." That wasn't too bad, "I'm a zaf-zaf..." I could do this, just the last part, "Zafara."

The creature blinked and shook its head, "A zafara? Have you looked in a mirror? You aren't a zafara."

Not a zafara? Wait, now I recognised this creature. It was a green pteri. "Don't they hurt?"

"What? Mirrors? No," It snickered a little.

"No, I meant the needle things all over your body."

"Needles?" The pteri looked at itself, "My feathers?"

"Feathers?"

It tugged out one of the needle things and flew down to me, placing it in my paw, "It's a feather," it looked me over and then spoke, "You don't know much, do you?"

I shook my head.

"Well, feathers are like my equivalent to fur. They help me fly."

"Fly? You mean when you went over the pen?"

The pteri nodded.

"Can I fly?"

It shook its head, "You're too heavy, and you need to have wings."

"Wings?"

It stretched out what I believed to have been arms, "Wings."

"Oh," I looked to the ground and dipped my head in a light nod.

"So what's your name?"

"Name?"

"What do they call you?"

What did they call me? Had they ever called me anything? I thought back on it.

I don't know why I hadn't paid much attention before, but the men had referred to me as three things. Experiment 47 was one of the 'names' they called me, Draik 1 was another. Calling me a draik was silly, I wasn't a draik. But, the pteri told me I wasn't a zafara so... what was I? And what was my name?

There was something else the men called me. A few of them anyway.

Dal.

"My name is Dal," I answered.

"Well, Dal, it was nice meeting you," The pteri said.

I smiled at my new... friend was the word?

And then the door opened.

As soon as it had opened my friend was gone. I was taken back inside and put in my cage. The men stayed longer than they usually did before they left. Once they were gone I struggled to see what it as that had their attention. Unfortunatly, my cage was closed in on almost every side. I could only see through the front of my cage and that didn't allow me to see whatever it was that was so interesting. With a sigh I turned and looked to the metal of my cage. I could see myself in the shiny metal. What I saw scared me.

I had figured out my first day that I was a white zafara. What I didn't know was that my head belonged to a maraquan draik.

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The next day I wasn't let out of my cage. I was just given my usual bowl of food and then they were back to whatever it was that was out of my view. This lasted a few days, my being stuck in the cage, before they finally seemed to remember and let me outside again.

I stood up on the platform and looked around eagerly for my friend. I stood there for hours, hoping he'd show. He didn't.

My hopes were dashed and my heart sank. I couldn't call for him. He hadn't told me his name.

Soon I was taken back inside and I got a glimpse of what the fuss was over.

My eyes widened as I stared at it. The man holding me stopped a moment to discuss something about it with one of the others and I got to look the thing over. It was in the tank that I had been in when I first awoke. This creature... was me.

Well, not me exactly. This one had stripes matching the ones on the maraquan draik head that we both shared.

I was put back in my cage and soon the men had left again. That night I couldn't sleep. They had created another me. Would it be my friend? Would I finally have someone to talk to?

I could only hope so.

**---End Chapter 1---**

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**Alright, so in the beginning I've kinda got this Mewtwo thing going on. If you want to see what Dal and Drazen look like look at Mattie9583's petpage on Neopets.**


	2. Prototype

Dun dun dun...

Seeing as I keep getting behind with DigiDuelists I'm going to grab hold of every sudden inspiration to write (this story) and add a chapter for DigiDuelists. I know, fan-writing shouldn't be a chore, but I can't help but feel guilty for starting a new story and letting that one slide. It is the most popular of my stories anyhow. Though, of course, it's also the only one with eleven chapters (at the moment of writing this) and a topic of two very known groups. Where as Inuyasha and the KitsuneYoukai (of which I nickname inu kitsune) is of two shows where one is no longer in the cartoon network line-up and the other comes on only around midnight (I say 11pm still counts. They keep jumping all over the place with the time on Inuyasha.)

Now that I have bored you with that. (You weren't actually bored were you?) Chapter two is about to begin.

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"Ssh, it's waking up."

I stared up at the tank from the front of my cage at the creature inside. It had been a few weeks since I first discovered he was even there; the copy. Within that time I had managed, night after night, to slowly pull my cage to the side so I could see him. It was an odd angle but I could see all of him this way. Now, the striped duplicate was awakening, much like I had. Pink-purple eyes exactly like my own peered around the room as the fluid around it drained. One of the men stepped forward and removed the top from the tank. He was wearing thick gloves and by the shiny black shoes and the black pants my guess was that this was the same man that had lifted me out of the tank so long ago. Now he was lifting this copy out and set him on the metal table. To me, it was like history was repeating itself. As if, maybe, I'd gone back in time to see what had happened to me but from a different view.

They began poking and prodding the duplicate with different objects as they had done with me. I guess this whole thing was just procedure. Soon they had taken the copy outside, probably to perform the same commands I had been given as part of the titled 'tests'. I still didn't know what they had been testing for.

One of the men didn't leave with the others but left through a different door. Before the others came back he enterred the room with a new cage. This one you could see out of on all sides and was set on the metal table. He muttered something about 'temporary cage' and 'get a proper one later'. Apparently they needed to get another cage like mine to put him in.

And then the other men came back. They put the other draik headed zafara in the cage, which was similar to a bird cage and larger than my own. And then, they left.

"H-hello?" I called softly.

This completely spooked the duplicate as he turned to look down at me. Yes, down, the table was higher than the shelf my cage was on. My guess was that he didn't know he could talk.

"Hello," I spoke, a bit more clearly, "I'm Dal."

Now the copy tried to speak, "H-h-he-he... hell-hello."

I smiled and dipped my head in a soft nod, "Hi."

"Hi," He smiled back and sat back on his haunches. Now that he'd gotten his voice going it would be easier to talk, "I'm Draik 2, from what I understand."

I shrugged a little, "I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it's not really a name. They called me experiment 47 and Draik 1 as well as Dal. Haven't they called you anything else?"

"Experiment 48 a few times..."

"They'll probably give you a more fitting name after a few days."

"Hey, how come you didn't come outside?"

"I couldn't... they didn't let me out. They haven't been since they started you."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," I paused a moment before asking a question that was starting to nag at the back of my mind, "You didn't see a green pteri by chance, did you?"

"A green pteri?"

I pointed a paw at the poster behind him.

He turned to look and for awhile examined each of the pets, "I think I saw that one, except it wasn't that color."

"Look at the chart next to it."

He looked to the color chart, "Oh! Yep, I saw him."

I sighed, somewhat relieved.

"How come you're not on the chart?"

"Huh?" I looked up at him and then frowned a little, "You don't know, do you?"

:"Know what?" He turned to look at me.

"This place is called a lab, or a laboratory. They make new neopets out of the DNA of other pets. You're almost an exact duplicate of me, except with stripes along your back."

"A duplicate? You mean I look like," He looked to the chart, "a zafara and... a draik too?" He looked back to me. I could only nod in return. He frowned a little, "So, what happens to us now?"

"You will be put through some tests and training, I'm bound to just be stuck here."

"They can't do that, you deserve to be outside too."

I smiled up at him, "You... you want to be friends?"

He blinked and tilted his head to the side and then grinned, "Sure!"

We were both able to sleep that night, knowing we had eachother. For the first time in a long time, I had someone to talk to and I wasn't alone.

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I turned out the duplicate's name was Drazen- or experiment 48, Draik 2. Drazen was put through the 'tests' and 'training' as I had been. I was afraid my new friend would suffer the same fate as me, to be locked up in the metal cage. But yet, even after 'tests' and 'training' became 'exercise', he was still let out and in periodically. He'd devised a plan that insured I was fed day after day. When he was brought back in he'd whine and paw toward my cage until they gave me my bowl of food, and then he'd quiet down and eat his own. The men couldn't seem to understand just what was going on with that, but I was just glad I wasn't starving. I swear I almost died because they didn't feed me, that's why Drazen came up with the plan. These men were far too incompetent to remember themselves...

And so that was how it worked out for the next couple of months. Until...

"Dal? Why do they have fluid in the tank?"

"Fluid?" I jumped to my feet, as I had been laying down.

"It looks like something's growing in there."

This was pretty much what I'd been dreading, "They're making another pet."

"Is that a bad thing?" I must've been a bit too expressive with my tone.

"It could be."

"Why?"

"You know, how I said they haven't let me out since you were created?"

"Yeah."

"That's why."

"Oh," Drazen looked to the floor and laid down, "I see. So now... now I'll be replaced?"

"I hope not," I answered truthfully. I didn't want Drazen to suffer the same fate as me.

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He didn't.

The new pet was all draik, but still mismatched like us. He had the normal draik body with the maraquan draik head. His body was colored much like Drazen's. He was experiment 49, Draik 3 - Dalion.

Dalion was shy and quiet, when we'd chat we'd have to encourage him to share his opinion. He was really a nice pet. But as far as replacing Drazen went, it turned out that they were to be trained together instead. I was sad, for I couldn't go out and play with my friends. Nothing bothered me more than that. One night I spoke so to Drazen and Dalion.

"What is so different about me that I can't go outside too?"

"I...uh...Dal," Drazen spoke softly.

I blinked and looked up at him.

"I... I know why you haven't been allowed outside."

"Is there something wrong with me?" Drazen was still in the bird cage while Dalion was in a kennel beside him. The new cages had just gotten there that day and they were waiting until tomorrow to install them. I couldn't understand what that was supposed to mean, there wasn't anything to install with mine.

"No, it's just..." Drazen turned to Dalion.

Dalion looked to the floor of his containment, "You're a prototype."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you're the original. Since we were based off the original and were designed to be better you now have faults. As far as design goes, we're better than you," Drazen looked to me sadly, "Honestly, Dal, it's only in their eyes. We don't think we're any better than you are."

I couldn't believe it. I was being judged because I was the first created. If there had been any pet before me I'd probably have been okay.

That night we all had an uneasy sleep, knowing of my judgement.

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It turned out the cages were a whole unit of connected cages, like a large bookcase all along one wall of cages connected to eachother. Drazen was the first to be moved into one of the cages. Dalion and I chatted for a bit before they took him to put in the cage. After that, they removed the bird cage and the aquarium from the room. I watched them, waiting for my turn to be moved. They had all stopped and were just standing around now, chatting and eating and writing down notes. Was I not going to be moved? It turned out I wasn't as the men left for the day. Well, actually, that's incorrect. I was moved, but to a smaller room with hardly any sunlight.

I was, in simple terms, like a kid's old volcano science project that was too cool to get rid of but no longer interesting enough to leave out in view. I was stuffed in a closet like the volcano that would never be looked at again.

So... what now?

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**I haven't written anything in so long. Sorry. And to be honest, I haven't written anything now. I've just read this over again and decided it was fine (I was going to rewrite the entire thing or maybe just part of it.) and added that last sentence there. **

**Well now, friends, that's the second chapter of Dal, Draik Mutation! Hope you enjoyed it!**


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